


In a jingle-jangle morning

by emei



Category: All Along the Watchtower (Song)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-19
Updated: 2010-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 18:42:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emei/pseuds/emei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the hours before dawn, a joker and a thief meet on top of a tower.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In a jingle-jangle morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [belantana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/belantana/gifts).



> I very much enjoyed getting to write this, and I hope it can brighten up your Yuletide somewhat, too! The title is in honour of Mr. Tambourine Man, who sneaked in here a little bit. My thanks to Sophinisba for beta reading.

After the banquet, the Joker slips into the shadows and disappears behind the draperies, quietly climbing the winding stairs of the tower. The thief is already on the balcony when she steps out, sitting nonchalantly on the balustrade, one foot tapping a waltz against the floor.

The Joker sweeps her hat off, bells jangling in irritation.

The thief laughs, wide and open like he has nothing to hide at all. The Joker doesn’t look at the bulging knapsack half-hidden behind him. It’s tradition, a pact of sorts. The secrets of the thief are the only ones she needn’t expose, just like he never steals what little she has: her tattered multicoloured dress, her armour against the world. With the bells jingle-jangling and the bright red and yellow catching all the gazes, she can speak truth to power. And power laughs, heartily.

Tonight was a night when all her gibes and barbed remarks seemed to shoot over their mark, like a flock of giddy geese running amok and getting lost in the crowd. Good nights, she shoots off taunts and twisty little digs at the princes like well-aimed arrows deftly finding the cracks in the shining armour of their self-confidence.

Nights like tonight, the laughter is bubbling light and unperturbed towards the ceiling of the banquet hall, and seems to say that life is but a joke. It is a farce of golden coins clinking happily in fat purses, of wine sloshing into goblets heavy red like the blood on the knuckles of working men’s hands. Laugh and dream if you can. If it’s not on your body that the joke has been written, in curling calligraphy cutting deep into skin and bones.

The thief picks the hat out of her hands and hangs it on the banister, silently. He reads her mood well - it is far from the first time they meet here, like this, and it’s not the first time she climbs to the top of the tower seeking escape. As if there would somehow be a new road for her to take from there, as if she too could climb walls to make her swift escape into the night.

“Dance with me,” she says, and the thief looks up with surprise written in the curves of his mouth. She offers a hand and he takes it, lets her draw him into a waltz beneath the stars already fading into morning. He follows well, steps clean and well timed to a music not playing in the here and now. There’s only the growl of wildcats outside the city walls.

“Do you remember,” says the thief, lifting one hand from her shoulder for a sweeping gesture towards the sky and the quiet market square below them, “the first time we danced?”

“Yes,” she answers, trying not to lose her rhythm while she loses herself in memory: a festival, a fire burning bright and music twirling as happily as the couples on the square. There will be another festival soon, as if nothing has changed at all. “It’s still true, you know. Not all lightness is make-believe. It’s just forgetting about today until tomorrow.”

The imaginary music comes to a slow stop, and they settle back down on the banister.

It’s not the world that’s changed, only their places in it, thinks the Joker. At least as far as she knows. News travel slowly here, still, meandering from far off places to arrive in bits and pieces, colourful stories torn apart and stitched together differently by their many retellings. Much as gossip changes as it flies about in the heart of the kingdom, she thinks, though hardly anyone notices.

In the streets below, dawn sees the servant women walking quickly to the start of the day, wide skirts swinging and bare feet hopping quickly across the cobblestones.

Far off in the distance, two riders appear, small black silhouettes against the horizons. The guards have not seen them yet and the alarm hasn’t yet been rung.

News lies untold on the lips of the riders, waiting to burst out at the first chance, and change clings to their black coats, rings out with the clattering of the horses’ hooves: Babylon has fallen.

Still, they are only just emerging from the horizon, and the city is suspended in the moment before the news. It could remain forever, an undisturbed bubble, as the riders spur their horses, forever the threat at the horizon as the princes keep guard from the watchtower.

In the meantime, life goes on, repeating the same rhythms: children’s feet running across the cobblestones, servants bowed low over their brooms, sweeping the detritus of the night’s extravaganza away like the cobwebs of a dream. The nobles and businessmen snore at a steady wine-induced pace, dreaming of golden coins spilling out over the floor.

The wind picks up. It twists around the tower, sets the flags billowing and whistles through the loopholes. The bells on the Joker’s hat jingle where it hangs abandoned on the banister.

“Better get going,” says the thief, rising to his feet in a smooth motion and rubbing his hands together. “It’s getting early, after all, and the hour for frankness is over, my dear Joker. Put your face back on and give them their farce again.”

She gives an elaborate bow, snatching her hat off the banister to hold it out like a beggar. He drops a shining golden coin in it, before flinging her a sharp grin and throwing himself over the banister and out of view.

The Joker straightens. It is the dawn of a new day and she’s on top of the watchtower if not of the world. It is not her place to scale walls and quietly disappear out of sight. She straightens her shirt and puts on her hat again, jauntily askew.

The riders are close enough to be distinct. Any moment now, the warning bell will ring out and the rich will stumble out of bed, sleep clinging to their eyelashes as stubbornly as they cling to their habits while the world changes under their feet.


End file.
